20150505.0726

As I noted last year at around this time, ­¡Feliz Cinco de Mayo! and happy Revenge of the Fifth!

Now that the holiday cheer is dispensed with, on to other things: The weather around Sherwood Cottage inches toward summer, with lows in the sixties (Fahrenheit, of course; we'd not want to convert to a sensible system of measurement, now, would we?) and highs formally in the eighties--although I would not be surprised to find that it actually reached ninety. Humidity is up, which likely accounts for the feeling; forecasts suggest that rain will be moving in and staying through the weekend, which will make for a fun time getting things loaded for travel. Once the semester ends, we are paying call on family, and I will be running thence to Kalamazoo for the International Congress on Medieval Studies, at which I am to be quite busy. Getting to do so in the rain makes things all the better.

I do not complain about the rain, though, not really. Having grown up in the Texas Hill Country makes me appreciate water falling form the sky. There is not often enough of it doing so in a year, and only rarely does too much come at once. Twice, to my recollection, or twice of serious note, anyway, but not more than that. The rivers often run low, as do the aquifers upon which many depend, and that is not less true near Sherwood Cottage than in the oak- and cedar-covered hills among which I grew up. Too much red dirt shows beside the waters that do not flow as they ought for me to complain that they are replenished from above--even if such rejuvenation has uncomfortably sexual overtones. But that I am happy to have it happen does not mean that I am pleased entirely with its timing; it will make some things a bit less convenient for me and mine.

That inconvenience occasions complaint is doubtlessly a sign of my being steeped in privilege, of course. I recognize this, and I recognize that my life has been largely good; if annoyance at having to drive in the rain befalls me, it only does so because there is rain (which is good) and because I have a car in which to drive (which I also count as good; if nothing else, I can run deliveries for extra money, although preferably not in a town whose population includes so many of my students--I have some dignity). I am able to drive said car, which not all are, and to expect that my travels will be conducted relatively safely; I do not have to worry so much that I will be pulled over--with legal sanction and official protection for the one doing it--for being in the kind of car I drive or for driving it through the places I do. I do not have to worry that my doing anything other than prostrating myself will end up in my being shot--or that I will be shot even if I do so, leaving the Mrs. and Ms. 8 to deal with the trauma and loss. All I have to do is get through the rain and let it soak into the ground--and that is not so bad.